TY - JOUR
T1 - Movements and body ownership
T2 - Evidence from the rubber hand illusion after mechanical limb immobilization
AU - Burin, Dalila
AU - Garbarini, Francesca
AU - Bruno, Valentina
AU - Fossataro, Carlotta
AU - Destefanis, Cristina
AU - Berti, Anna
AU - Pia, Lorenzo
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank the participants involved in the study. This work has been funded by Talenti della Società Civile 2015 (Fondazione Goria and Fondazione Molo) scholarship to DB and by Miur grant [ RBSI146V1D MIUR-SIR 2014 ] to FG.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2017/12
Y1 - 2017/12
N2 - There is no consensus on whether, and to what extent, actions contribute to constructing awareness of one's own body. Here we investigated at both physiological and behavioral level whether a prolonged limb immobilization affects body ownership. We tested a group of healthy participants, whose left-hand movements were prevented by a cast for one week, and a control group without any movement restriction. In both groups, we measured the strength of the rubber hand illusion (i.e., proprioceptive shift and questionnaire on ownership) and the physiological parameters known to be modulated by short-term arm immobilization (i.e., resting motor threshold, motor evoked potentials and force parameters) before and after the week of immobilization. Our results showed stronger illusory effects on the immobilized hand on both behavioral indexes and weaker illusory effects on the non-immobilized hand on the questionnaire. Additionally, the increased proprioceptive shift was positively correlated to the motor threshold of the contralateral hemisphere. Our findings show at both behavioral and physiological level that altering those movement-related signals which constantly stem from our own body parts, modulates the experience of those body parts as mine. This, in turn, supports the view of a direct role of actions in the developing and maintaining a coherent body ownership.
AB - There is no consensus on whether, and to what extent, actions contribute to constructing awareness of one's own body. Here we investigated at both physiological and behavioral level whether a prolonged limb immobilization affects body ownership. We tested a group of healthy participants, whose left-hand movements were prevented by a cast for one week, and a control group without any movement restriction. In both groups, we measured the strength of the rubber hand illusion (i.e., proprioceptive shift and questionnaire on ownership) and the physiological parameters known to be modulated by short-term arm immobilization (i.e., resting motor threshold, motor evoked potentials and force parameters) before and after the week of immobilization. Our results showed stronger illusory effects on the immobilized hand on both behavioral indexes and weaker illusory effects on the non-immobilized hand on the questionnaire. Additionally, the increased proprioceptive shift was positively correlated to the motor threshold of the contralateral hemisphere. Our findings show at both behavioral and physiological level that altering those movement-related signals which constantly stem from our own body parts, modulates the experience of those body parts as mine. This, in turn, supports the view of a direct role of actions in the developing and maintaining a coherent body ownership.
KW - Body ownership
KW - Movement
KW - Physiology
KW - Rubber hand illusion
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U2 - 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.11.004
DO - 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.11.004
M3 - Article
C2 - 29109038
AN - SCOPUS:85033366020
VL - 107
SP - 41
EP - 47
JO - Neuropsychologia
JF - Neuropsychologia
SN - 0028-3932
ER -